


Light Me Up Again

by amtrak12



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Introspection, Post-Movie(s), deals with depression related memory problems and therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8550358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amtrak12/pseuds/amtrak12
Summary: Erin fears she's forgotten much of her time with Abby until she realizes Abby is the time she remembers best.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my own depression-caused gap in my memories. Title technically comes from the Ingrid Michaelson song 'Light Me Up' but it's not for any particular reason. I was just listening to it while writing this.

So much Erin doesn't remember. So many memories she can no longer grasp.

What classes did she share with Abby their junior year of high school? They didn't just have lunch together, did they? The night they staked out Woodlawn Cemetery, where did they park? There wasn't a parking lot at that cemetery, but they had to have driven to get there, right? All Erin can recall is a vague impression of night and stone and dirt and ducking behind trees to avoid passing headlights.

Abby still has notebooks: pages and pages of spiral-bound notes and doodles that come with half a dozen memories per page. She can recall their teachers' names and what month they made a particular breakthrough in their research. Erin, on the other hand, tossed aside her copies of their research as quickly as possible in graduate school. She can remember what year they first took calculus (senior year), but she can't recall their differential equations professor's name or the building the classroom was in. She can't remember if they lived on the second floor of the dorms during their freshman or sophomore year; can't recall which years they went home for Thanksgiving, or if they ever went home for it at all. She remembers drawing the connection between spin networks and the mechanics of the spectral barrier, watching The X-Files pilot live and gushing over it with Abby, but she doesn't remember what they gave each other for Christmas most years.

She pretends she remembers: smiles and agrees if Abby brings up something she can't quite picture while working to turn the conversation to something she can recall. She's terrified all those years of denying and actively not thinking about ghosts and their research has made her forget Abby. That she's to blame, not the mere passing of time, for these lost memories.

She keeps blaming herself until she restarts therapy.

Seeing a therapist is Patty's suggestion. The team was hit with another round of bad press -- backlash for the initial round of gratitude apparently. Erin slipped into another wave of anxiety and only managed to squash the urge to run because she caught sight of the fear in Abby's eyes. 

But squashing the urge didn't help her anxiety dissipate. It grew and grew and tore at her until Patty found her hiding upstairs, shaking and sick and completely overwhelmed. She sat with her until Erin eventually calmed down enough to talk. Then, she suggested seeing a therapist.

"Cause this kind of reaction's not normal. It shouldn't be normal. You shouldn't have to feel like this."

Erin pointed out how therapists view people who see ghosts as crazy and how they couldn't help her because they wouldn't believe anything she said.

"Actually...." Patty explained how she's been seeing new ads where therapists were specifically targeting people who were struggling after seeing ghosts. "And they're not the kind of quacks who are gonna try to make you forget. They say up front they know ghosts are real. The mayor's office denying everything's got a lot of people feeling messed up, and these folks want to help."

Starting therapy is Erin's choice this time, as opposed to when her parents forced her into it. It's uncomfortable and scary, and Erin's still unconvinced it won't just make everything worse. But her therapist this time already believes in ghosts, was there even when the city was overran with them, and back at the lab, Abby is still walking on eggshells around her. Ultimately, Erin's fear of letting her down again wins out over the rest.

Erin and her therapist talk a lot about the past: about what happened when she was a child, about what she remembered. They discuss the bullying in school, the reactions and lack of support from her teachers and parents. They talk about Abby, about the research and book, about Erin running away. Dredging up the past and discussing all of this is difficult -- because it's painful, yes but also....

Because she honestly can't remember most of it.

Oh, the broad strokes, she can recall. Main events, major locations -- she remembers who her graduate advisers were and which of the Columbia faculty she interviewed with to land her job there -- but the details are blurry or nonexistent. They're things she never realized she couldn't remember until someone began asking questions. She can't say when the bullying started exactly, can't remember the difference between elementary school and middle school, can't even form a clear picture of what her middle school looked like. She doesn't remember which years she lived in each of her New York apartments, and only knows she's been in her current one since 2010 because she happened to look over her lease recently.

It scares her. Chills her with a fear that runs much deeper than the fear of ghosts or heckling bloggers or her bosses (ex-bosses) thinking she's crazy. How does she not remember so much of her life? Why are her memories so hazy?

Her therapist tosses out explanations. Depression. Anxiety. Altered brain chemistry preventing long-term memories from being formed. The explanations don't make her feel any better.

There are some things she still remembers clearly, though. The first night she saw her neighbor's ghost and much of the year that followed, she can recite like it was just last year. It was the inciting incident, she's told. It was the event her brain has fossilized to revisit whenever her anxieties spike from new stress.

You don't say.

Sophomore year of college, it turns out, she remembers almost in its entirety. Her mental map of campus is still muddled, but she remembers the layout of the furniture in their dorm room. Remembers opting to slide their beds together rather than bunk them so they could lounge better in front of the TV and talk comfortably at all hours of the night. She remembers the walks to their evening physics lab, squinting against the setting sun during the fall and later huddling against the dark winter chill. She even remembers some of the floor events their resident adviser (Lisa, Erin recalls) put on that year, and the flower and butterfly door decorations that had been put up after spring break (Erin's flower was yellow; she remembers thinking it looked cheerful).

"This is the year you began organizing your research into a book," her therapist muses. "Wasn't it also when The X-Files premiered, further inspiring your work? Maybe you remember this year so well because it's when you felt most validated in your experience and belief in ghosts."

Erin has a different theory.

Abby.

Because it isn't only sophomore year of college she remembers. It's all of her time with Abby, stretching forwards and back. There's no question she remembers the last half of high school better than the first, and things don't blur completely again until the panic-shadowed second semester of her graduate studies just before she abandoned Abby to the wolves.

The stretch of time she feared she'd forgotten is actually the time she remembers best.

She's quiet when she returns to the lab after that particular therapy session, though that's not unusual. It typically takes her a few hours to shift gears and be able to socialize with the team after therapy. It's why she usually buries herself with paperwork or mathematical proofs for their latest spectral theories after a session.

Speaking of, there's a drawing for a new machine and pages of scribbles that might pass for numbers in some language not currently known on Earth waiting for her in the middle of her desk when she gets back. Stuck to the drawing is a post-it note shouting 'PROVE ME WRONG. I TRIPLE DOG DARE YOU'. A gift from Holtzmann, no doubt. It used to be sketch pads and coloring books that Erin didn't understand the point of until Holtz stammeringly admitted that she'd always preferred to doodle whenever she got released from therapy. It's since changed to proofs and logic puzzles and equipment plans to validate.

Today, though, Erin's quiet doesn't feel like something she needs to channel into equations and busy work. Instead, it feels contemplative and... outward reaching, like she wants company, like....

Abby is working at the containment system. Erin walks over to her.

"Hey," Abby greets her. Her eyes scan her over, and Erin can feel the worry in them as easily as she can see it. "Everything okay?"

Erin tells herself Abby's only asking because Erin doesn't usually seek her out immediately after therapy; that the only reason her mind jumps to when she left Abby all those years ago is because of her own anxieties and not because it's what Abby is actually thinking about.

"Yeah." Erin nods and flashes her a smile. There's a lot more she wants to add, feelings like 'I love you' and 'thank you' and 'you are so important to me', but they won't manifest into words. She settles for glancing at the containment system and asking "Do you need any help?"

"Yeah, sure." Abby starts filling her in on the measurements she's taking and the tests she's running to explore the energies required to change ectoplasm from shapeless vapors to a semi-solid form. The topics are a little deeper than Erin can really process at the moment, but she sticks around and helps where she can. Mostly, she listens and soaks in Abby's presence.

Because it may have taken her years and decades to fully realize it, but at Abby's side is where she's happiest. So at Abby's side is where she's going to stay.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @amtrak12


End file.
